New idea: Combat Actions (3.5, but could apply elsewhere)

[Cookiemobsta]

An awful lot of combat in D+D devolves into "I hit it with my axe" over and over and over again. Sometimes characters use a special attack, but generally that still boils down to "I hit it with my axe--and do extra damage" In order to give players more to do and make combat a bit more unpredictable and exciting, I developed the idea of combat actions. The concept behind them is that if a character lands a very successful hit on the enemy, it opens up the enemy's defense and gives the character the momentum they need to do something cool.
The mechanics
The way it works in game mechanics is, if a character hits an enemy and beats their AC by 5 or more, they are allowed to do a combat action immediately after their turn. The number 5 is arbitrary; you are welcome to adjust it based on the power of your characters or their opponents. Combat actions don't require the use of a move or standard happen; they happen for free and instantly. For the most part, they also instantly succeed--in the interest of speeding up combat, no additional check is needed. However, each character can only do one combat action per round, even if they hit multiple times.
What is a combat action?
Combat actions can be any number of things. I've listed some examples here; you are welcome to come up with new ones.
1) The character bats the enemy's blade aside and lands a kick on their chest. This does no damage but caused the enemy to stumble back 5 feet. If there enemy stumbles into something damaging (like a window), they'll take damage. If there's a cliff edge within 5 feet, they'll go plummeting off, Sparta-style.
2) The character ducks under the enemy's guard and moves to the other side of them. The character is now on the opposite side of the enemy.
3) The character bats the enemy's blade out of position, leaving the enemy flat-footed until the enemy's next turn.
4) The character gets to make a free trip, disarm, sunder or grapple attempt (although the normal rules apply here--so they must make opposed rolls)
5) The character may swap weapons or pick up an item without using a move action or provoking an attack of opportunity.
6) If the character has a move action remaining, they may move away from the enemy without provoking an attack of opportunity.
7) The character may interact with the environment without provoking an attack of opportunity (for instance, knocking over a table, pulling a lever, or spilling a jar)
8) The character may do a throat punch or groin-kick, which requires them to successfully hit the enemy with an unarmed attack. If successful, the enemy doubles over in pain and must make a con check or lose their next turn.
Other notes
1) These combat actions can be used in ways that are very powerful. For instance, the PCs may decide that rather than fight your Big Bad Villain, they're simply going to kick him off a cliff. If this is too much of a problem, you might decide to give powerful enemies a chance to save against combat actions, or simply keep your powerful enemies in areas where combat actions can't sway the fight too much.
But honestly, I think it is more fun to allow players to use these combat actions even when they are very powerful. Spending 5 rounds whacking at Dark Lord Whoever with your axe is much less fun and memorable than kicking him off a cliff.
2) The DM will have to use common sense when deciding when combat actions can be used. Rendering a city guard flat-footed makes sense. Making a dragon flat-footed does not.
3) For the most part, common enemies should not be allowed to use combat actions (even if they beat PC armor by 5 or more.) This prevents combat actions from slowing down combat, and it also makes the PCs appear more hardcore and cool. However, significant enemies should use them.

So there's the idea. Please let me know other ideas for combat actions that you have, and if you use them successfully in one of your campaigns, please let me know that too. This idea is very much a work-in-progress, so I am eager for any feedback that you have.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Nice idea - but you're replicating a lot of existing effects: Trip, Disarm, Stunning Fist...

There's a bunch of dynamic combat moves in the Conan d20 game. I did some converting of them for standard D&D rules, over here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127431)
They might help you.

[Cookiemobsta]

Altair, I looked at the Conan rules. Lots of them are interesting, but there were two issues I had with them.
1st, most of them have requirements (like a high BAB) that mean only high-level characters have access to them. Although it's more realistic to think that high-level characters would be able to decapitate someone or chop off a wrist, the fact is that low-level characters want to have fun too
2nd, many of them are either obviously more powerful or less powerful than a basic attack. Because of this, most of them would rarely if ever be used. If a character has access to Conan attacks that are more powerful than a basic attack, he will almost never use his basic attack. If his basic attack is more powerful than a Conan attack, he will almost never use the Conan attacks. The benefit of the combat action is that there's no trade-off required; you can use them in addition to your regular attacks. This is why it's ok for them to replicate effects like Trip or Stunning Fist--with Trip (for instance), you have to do that as your standard action. If Trip is less powerful than a standard attack (which is normally is, unless you've buffed it quite a bit), you will never use it. But with combat actions, because you get to use it for free, you can experiment with new ideas.
However, there's a lot of interesting possibilities with the Conan rules. Do you think any of them could be folded into combat actions?

[Nakun]

I really Like this idea because I've been trying to up 3.5 a little to make it more comparable to 4e in pacing and low-level excitement.

My input/ possible modifications:
1) Only available to "martial" characters; it makes sense for a fighter to be able to take advantage of opponents' weaknesses in the middle of combat, a wizard would be less likely to have the combat experience to see these openings or the physical reflexes to pull them off.
Also, Fighters rarely have really cool visual stuff at high levels where as wizards and other casters have things like Chain Lightning and Flame Strike. I think that these make high level martial characters more appealing, as they will have more access to these.

2) Perhaps, instead of introducing all of these at the start, groups of them may be gained through feats. It makes sense for low level characters to be able to knock a blade away fro them, but to be able to switch weapons (or even switch to their hands and throat/groin punch someone) is pretty high leveled.

3) With the overlap with tripping, sundering, and stunning fist-ing, you could make these feats prerequisites to the combat actions they relate to. For instance, a stunning fist requires that declare that you use it before you make the attack roll, possibly failing in the execution so perhaps you would let a monk with combat actions have the option to, after a successful hit, make a second attack that deals no damage or non-lethal damage and also stuns the opponent.
With this, it looks like you wanted it to auto-connect without an attack roll, and perhaps that's fair since it allows for a save against the effect. However, people using this should be wary, for example I just realized that getting an attack off for free (even if it deals non-lethal damage) is almost the equivalent of using an action point for an extra standard action (this becomes even closer with stunning added on the the damage.)

4) With work I've been doing, I wanted the fighter to have more options, so at 1st, 7th, 13th, and 19th level I was going to have "weapon abilities" that they could chose from; stuff like dealing con damage with an axe or hammer (similar to 4e.) These combat actions might be a nice thing to have in addition to (ie, chose a weapon ability and a combat action at levels...)/ as alternatives to weapon abilities.
Also, I know Paizo in their Pathfinder setting has given rogues more access to rogue talents (I think there are low level talents and high level talents, the high level ones being those taken from the 3.5 PHB.) And these combat actions would be a perfect thing for those.

Also, as I noticed when writing this, action points are going to have some conflict with the combat actions. How I use action points (and how they're used in 4e and Ebberon (I believe)) is that a character can use an action point to take a free standard action (which can then be dropped to a move, minor, or whatever other action type.) Because of this, you probably don't want to have any combat actions that provide direct second attacks at max damage; this would be, in effect, giving some characters more action points than others. You did not do this, which I think keeps the balance in the game.

Overall, awesome job. This is a really neat idea that goes a long way to making martial characters (specifically / if you do restrict it to martial characters) much more interesting in the higher levels. The overcoming AC by a certain figure is really creative, because it keeps balance and doesn't make these things be super rare occurrences (I would have tried on critical hits, but I like this idea much more.) Also, the idea of giving these to enemies, much like WotC giving boss monsters action points is awesome; it's always nice to throw something like this at players who are expecting the Big Bad Barbarian to just smash stuff.

Cookies to you!

[Deathdarken]

I'm going to use something like this for my bleach system(the anime) because some people would see it and get attacks to make it feel more like real combat